--"So that elected me, you see. Every time I try to get a night's sleep, here comes some damn sagebrusher and wants me to come out and cure his sick cow, or else mamma's got a baby, or a horse has got in the wire, or papa's broke a leg, or something. Damn the country anyhow! I wish I'd never seen it. I'm a doctor, yes, but I'm the Company doctor, and I don't have to run on these fool trips. But of course I do," he added, smiling sunnily after his usual fashion. "So I come along here. And you hold me up. What do _you_ want?" "I want you to wait and come in and see Nels Jensen with me, Doc," said Wid Gardner. "Hell's to pay." "What's wrong?" Doctor Barnes' face grew graver. "We don't know what. When Sim and me come home, some one had been here when we was gone. Sim's barn is burned, and all his hay, and all mine, and my house--I haven't got lock, stock nor barrel left of my ranch, and nothing to make a crop with." "What do you think?" asked Doctor Barnes gravely. "We don't know what to think. It's like enough a hold-on from that old Industrial work--they been threatening all down the valley, since times are hard and wages fell a little after the war work shut down. There was some hay burned down below there. Folks said it was spontaneous combustion, or something--said it got hot workin' in the stacks. I ain't so sure now. It's them old ways. As if they ever got anything by that!" Dr. Barnes puckered his lips into a long whistle. "I wonder if there's any two and two to put together in _this_ thing!" said he. "I came up here to get that poor devil out of the woods. But who can tell what in the merry hell has really happened up there?" "We got to go and see," said Wid Gardner. "You know that woman?" The doctor nodded. "She's gone too. Whoever it was took her off in a car from up at the head of Sim Gage's lane." Doctor Barnes got down out of the car, and the two walked through Nels Jensen's gate. Jensen was afoot, ready for the day's work. He agreed that one of his boys would carry the news to the Company dam. "Better give us a little something to eat along with us, Karen," he said to his wife. He took down his rifle, and looked inquiringly at Doctor Barnes. "Have you got an extra gun?" asked the latter. Jensen nodded, finding the spare piece near at hand. Very little more was said. They all walked out into the morning, when the red ball of the sun was coming up above the misty valley. "Go on ahead in the car," said Wid. "I'll bring my horse." They met at Sim Gage's half-burned home. Sim himself hobbled out, rifle under one arm and the little Airedale under the other, the latter wriggling and barking in his delight. The purr of a good motor was soon under them. In a few moments they were out of Sim Gage's lane and along the highway as far as the point where the Tepee Creek trail turned off into the mountains.